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and then walked over the low brush-covered hill to his cruiser, a big black and tan Crown Vic with county markings.
    He popped the trunk, broke the Barrett down, easing the hot barrel out of the lock, wiped the machine with a silicone-saturated cloth, and tucked it away in sections inside its carrying case.
    Then he peeled off his bloodstained overalls, stuffed them into a brown paper bag, slammed the trunk, checked his uniform in the side mirror—he looked pretty good, all things considered—got in behind the wheel, and slowly drove away from the scene. In his rearview mirror a thin spiral of smoke was rising into the sky. The crows had come back, now that all the excitement was over, and a few of the hungrier ones were settling onto the roofs of the squad cars, drawn by the scent of fresh blood.
    The sun was sliding down and long blue shadows stretched across the highway. A honey-colored light strobed along the side of his face as he drove through a stand of cottonwoods. On his police radio the air was crackling with cross talk, but it sounded like somebody at HQ—probably Mickey Hancock—was finally getting a grip on things. Soon they’d be calling him in, along with every other cop in the western hemisphere.
    Coker sighed, looking out at the world rolling by with a satisfied mind. He smiled, put on his Ray-Bans, lit himself a cigarette, pulled the smoke in deep. His shift was just starting, with what looked to be a long, hectic night ahead. He was, however, consoled by the warmth and the lovely light. It promised to be a pretty evening.

Bock’s Afternoon Was Disappointing
    “All rise,” and so they all rose, as Judge Theodore W. Monroe came back into the courtroom, his robes swirling behind him like portents of doom. The courthouse had originally been a Catholic church, and it still had ten wood-frame leaded-glass windows along either side, old whitewashed wooden plank walls, and a row of ceiling fans down the cedar-vaulted middle to stir, without much effect, the humid air, which, after all these years, still carried the scent of sandalwood incense.
    Judge Monroe, a hatchet-faced old warrior with small black eyes and a thin smile, sat where there once would have been an altar but now there was a high carved wooden bench with an oil painting of a Civil War cavalry battle—Brandy Station on the second day—and a giant but faded American flag hanging behind. The flag had only forty-eight stars, but since neither Alaska nor Hawaii had written him to complain it was still hanging up there behind Judge Monroe’s gray and bristly head.
    He nodded curtly at the other people in the room, all eight of them, the unhappy ex-couple at two separate tables, standing by their lawyers, the clerk of the court, the court deputy, and a familiar elderly couple at the rear, the Fogartys, Dwayne and Dora, both retired deputy sheriffs, childless, amiable and well liked by the court staff, as alike in appearance as hermaphroditic toads. The Fogartys attended almost every trial, large and small, like retired horses that can’t stay away from the track.
    Judge Monroe’s steel eyeglass frames glittered in the late-afternoonsunlight streaming in through the western windows. He straightened his papers into a pile, lifted them up, and tapped the fat sheaf into squared-off order on the desk, and laid it down again, resting his blue-veined hands on top.
    “Kate—Ms. Kavanaugh—is there anything you would like to add before I render my decision?”
    While he was presiding over a case, as a matter of ethics, Ted Monroe worked to suppress his soft spot for Kate Kavanaugh, who had effectively taken over his family law practice when he was elected to the bench. He and Kate’s father, Dillon Walker, had both gone up to the University of Virginia, many long years ago now, and Ted Monroe had watched Kate grow from a long-legged coltish child with wild auburn hair and wary blue eyes into this self-contained and forceful young lawyer now